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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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13 - Mars Exploration Rover Pancam multispectral imaging of rocks, soils, and dust at Gusev crater and Meridiani Planum
- from Part III - Mineralogy and Remote Sensing of Rocks, Soil, Dust, and Ices
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- By J. F. Bell III, Cornell University, Department of Astronomy, 402 Space Sciences Building, Ithaca, NY 14853-6801, USA, W. M. Calvin, Department of Geological Science, MS 172, University of Nevada Reno, NV 89557-0138, USA, W. H. Farrand, Space Science Institute 4750 Walnut Street, # 205 Boulder, CO 80301, USA, R. Greeley, Planetary Geology Group Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-1404, USA, J. R. Johnson, US Geological Survey Astrogeology Team 2255 N. Gemini Drive Flagstaff, AZ 86001-1698, USA, B. Jolliff, Washington University, Campus Box 1169 One Bookings Drive St Louis, MO 63130, USA, R. V. Morris, NASA/JSC Code KR, Building 31, Room 120 2101 NASA Road 1 Houston, TX 77058, USA, R. J. Sullivan, CRSR Cornell University, 308 Space Sciences Building Ithaca, NY 14853, USA, S. Thompson, Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration Box 871404 Tempe, AZ 85287, USA, A. Wang, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Washington University, Campus Box 1196 1 Bookings Drive St Louis, MO 63130-4862, USA, C. Weitz, Planetary Science Institute, NASA 1700 East Fort Lowell Suite 106 Tuscon, AZ 85719, USA, S. W. Squyres, Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, 428 Space Sciences Building, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
- Edited by Jim Bell, Cornell University, New York
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- The Martian Surface
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- 10 December 2009
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- 05 June 2008, pp 281-314
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ABSTRACT
Multispectral imaging from the Panoramic Camera (Pancam) instruments on the Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) Spirit and Opportunity has provided important new insights about the geology and geologic history of the rover landing sites and traverse locations in Gusev crater and Meridiani Planum. Pancam observations from near-UV to near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths provide limited compositional and mineralogic constraints on the presence, abundance, and physical properties of ferric- and ferrous-iron–bearing minerals in rocks, soils, and dust at both sites. High-resolution and stereo morphologic observations have also helped to infer some aspects of the composition of these materials at both sites. Perhaps most importantly, Pancam observations were often efficiently and effectively used to discover and select the relatively small number of places where in situ measurements were performed by the rover instruments, thus supporting and enabling the much more quantitative mineralogic discoveries made using elemental chemistry and mineralogy data. This chapter summarizes the major compositionally and mineralogically relevant results at Gusev and Meridiani derived from Pancam observations. Classes of materials encountered in Gusev crater include outcrop rocks, float rocks, cobbles, clasts, soils, dust, rock grindings, rock coatings, windblown drift deposits, and exhumed whitish/yellowish sulfur- and silica-rich soils. Materials studied in Meridiani Planum include sedimentary outcrop rocks, rock rinds, fracture fills, hematite spherules, cobbles, rock fragments, meteorites, soils, and windblown drift deposits. This chapter also previews the results of a number of coordinated observations between Pancam and other rover-based and Mars-orbital instruments that were designed to provide complementary new information and constraints on the mineralogy and physical properties of Martian surface materials.
2 - Madison's Vision: Requisitions and Rights
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 40-60
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At the start of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May 1787, the Virginia delegation offered a plan, now called the Virginia Plan, which set the agenda for the deliberations. The Virginia Plan proposed a strong national government, “breathtaking,” Gordon Wood has called it, in its contrast to the weak assembly of delegates from the states that preceded it. Under the Virginia Plan, the government at the national level would be a complete government, able to raise taxes act on its own without approval of the states. National law would be supreme over state law. To Lord Dorchester, governor of Quebec, the Virginia Plan is the Constitution: When the Convention had finished, Lord Dorchester reported home that the delegates rejected the New Jersey Plan, which would have merely increased the powers of the present congress, on the ground that the powers it gave to the congress were insufficient. They had rejected Alexander Hamilton's plan, which, Dorchester claimed, would have established a monarchy. The Convention, he said, had adopted the Virginia Plan.
Edmund Randolph, then governor of Virginia, offered the Virginia Plan to the Convention, but it had been largely written by James Madison. Madison had to give up some provisions of his nationalism in the Virginia Plan. As the Convention continued, Madison lost on issues that were important to him.
Index
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 279-294
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8 - The Modest and Mercantile Commerce Clause
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 189-201
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The Constitution gives Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” Contemporaries listed regulation of commerce as one of the Constitution's major purposes. Indeed, the commerce clause is even now said to be a “strong impetus for calling the Constitutional Convention.” A review of the historical record does not support that view. Regulation of commerce is best seen as a modest, even trivial power. Under the best understanding, it contributed little to the adoption of the Constitution.
“Regulation of commerce” was sometimes a synonym for nationalizing the state imposts to give Congress a source of revenue to restore the public credit. Nationalizing the impost was indeed important. Federal power over imposts, however, is given by the tax clause, the first clause of the powers of Congress, so that the power to regulate commerce does not add anything for tax. Other than tax, none of the programs espoused at the time under the cover of “regulation of commerce” ever amounted to much.
To understand words of a historical document, one must first understand the core programs that words were written to further. We can understand a vague and malleable phrase like “regulation of commerce” only by seeing through the words to look at the programs that lie under the cover of the phrase. When the Constitution came into effect, Congress chose not to adopt the nontax programs previously mentioned under the words “regulation of commerce” even with the constitutional authorization.
9 - Creditors, Territories, and Shaysites
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 202-222
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Various scholars of the Constitution have seriously proposed that the motive for the document was to serve the economic interests of creditors by allowing them to collect against hard-pressed debtors, that the purpose of the Constitution was to settle territory disputes among the states, or that the motive for the Constitution was to suppress popular unrest like that of Shays's Rebellion. All of those explanations, however, seem quite minor on examination as a factor in the switch to the new Constitution.
CREDITORS!
Charles Beard, in his famed Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, argued that the Constitution was originated and carried to adoption by a small group of men who held public securities and private debt and who wanted to get paid. Ratification, in Beard's view, was a battle of creditor proponents of the Constitution against an opposition consisting of agricultural interests and honest debtors. The Constitution had two fundamental parts, Beard argued: One part created the national government, and the other part imposed “[r]estrictions on the state legislatures which had been so vigorous in their attacks on capital.” Professor Gordon Wood has argued, more recently, that although Beard was strictly wrong on part of his thesis, still the Constitution arose more than anything else from a desire to prevent debtor relief legislation in the states.
The Constitution does in fact prohibit the states from issuing paper money and from impairing the obligation of contracts, including contractual debt.
Frequently Cited Sources
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp xi-xvi
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10 - Hamilton's Constitution
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 223-246
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The “revolution which has given us the Constitution,” said a letter to the editor in 1790, was the default on the public war debts and “the very great embarrassments which attended all concerns on that account.” The constitutional revolution is in this sense like the French Revolution. In 1792, a delegate to the French National Assembly announced that “we only made the Revolution to become masters of taxation.” The French monarchy of the ancien regime had used a tax system so riddled with exemptions, privileges, and libertés, and saddled with such a thicket of middle men, that it could not reach the wealth of a prosperous country to solve the financial bankruptcy of the monarchy. Like the French Revolution, one aim of our constitutional revolution was to allow the national government to gain access to the wealth of the nation, that is, to master taxation.
The fiscal crisis that caused the constitutional revolution was solved, however, with quite modest federal taxes. In 1790, Alexander Hamilton, the newly installed Secretary of the Treasury, recommended to Congress a financial package that followed the 5 percent impost proposals of 1781 and 1783. The major difference between the 1790 and the 1781 and 1783 proposals was that the new Constitution allowed Congress to adopt the impost, and then a supplemental whiskey tax, without facing the one-state veto rule of the Articles and, indeed, without approval from any state. The revenues from the modest federal taxes were pledged to the payment of the war debts.
Acknowledgments
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp vii-x
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11 - The Turning of Madison
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 249-261
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THE GREAT SCHISM
For all of the strength of Madison's nationalism in 1787, Madison later joined with Jefferson in the opposition to Alexander Hamilton and ultimately in forming a stable political party aligned against the Federalists, and in favor of constraining the federal government. Washington invited both Hamilton and Jefferson into his cabinet, assuming that the country could be run like the Army by candid discussions and advice from his staff. Washington was apparently dumbfounded to learn in February 1792, that Thomas Jefferson strongly disliked Alexander Hamilton and his programs and that the government by consensus that Washington wanted to run was splitting apart into irreconcilable factions.
Madison turned against the national government only after the Constitution was ratified. It had been “a primary article of [Madison's] creed” in the period leading up to the Constitution, as Hamilton “knew for a certainty,” that the real danger to our system was the subversion of the national authority by a preponderance of the state governments. Madison had been primarily responsible for the core steps in the Virginia Plan, ending the confederate system and creating a national government able to raise funds and operate on its own. Madison had been responsible more than any other person for flipping the system from a supremacy of the states over the Congress to supremacy of the Congress over the states. Madison before the turn had comfortably advocated reducing the states to the status of counties, where they might be “subordinately useful.”
12 - The End of the Constitutional Movement
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 262-275
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The pressing need for which the Constitution was adopted was to re-establish the public credit by making creditable payments on the debts of the Revolutionary War. When war came again, the Congress would need to be able to borrow. The problem of the war debts could not be solved if Rhode Island – and also other miscreant states – were given the veto required by the Articles of Confederation. Given that it was impossible to fix the problem within the context of the Articles, the Framers tore up the Articles and started afresh. Starting afresh, it was easy to conclude with Madison that the confederation form of government always failed for want of power at the center, and so the Constitution created a complete government on the federal level able to operate independent of the states, and supreme over them. Given that new framework, Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury was able to restore the public credit with modest tax on sinful things such as imports and whiskey. With the addition of a tax on whiskey, Hamilton could even go beyond the mandatory restoration of federal credit and assume the war debts of the states.
Ulimately, however, the drive to pay the war debts ended, and honest creditors who supplied the Army were not paid. We can mark the end of the constitutional movement with Georgia's refusal to pay one Robert Farquhar and with the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment in 1795, which backed up and even constitutionalized Georgia's unrighteous refusal to pay its debt.
5 - Partial Losses
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 100-127
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The Constitution that was proposed by the Philadelphia Convention was less nationalistic than Madison's original plans expressed in his letters to his mentors. Madison's original vision for the Constitution would have required that votes in both houses of Congress be apportioned according to population. Congressmen would represent people and not states, and voting power in the Congress would depend on population. Madison, moreover, through the end of the Convention wanted a strong national government that would be able to veto any state law. He could not convince the Convention to grant the federal veto, however, and the scope of federal supremacy was not extended “to any case whatsoever.” Madison was very unhappy about his losses, especially about the loss of the full-ranging federal veto. Still, what he accomplished of his nationalist vision was extraordinary and revolutionary.
PRINCIPLE OF REPRESENTATION
The shift in legitimating foundation from states to the people seemed to Madison to require a change in the rules of representation in Congress. Under the Articles, each state had equal vote in the Congress, no matter how many people were in the state. Thus a large state like Virginia and a tiny state like Rhode Island had the same voting power. A state could have as many as seven or as few as two delegates, but in determining questions in the Congress of states assembled, the delegates of the state altogether, no matter what their number, gave the state only a single vote.
Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
- The Meaning of the Founders' Constitution
- Calvin H. Johnson
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- Published online:
- 27 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 01 August 2005
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This book is a history that explains the adoption of the US Constitution in terms of what the proponents of the Constitution were trying to accomplish. The Constitution was a revolutionary document replacing the confederation mode with a complete three-part national government supreme over the states. The most pressing need was to allow the federal government to tax to pay off the Revolutionary War debts. In the next war, the United States would need to borrow again. The taxes needed to restore the public credit proved to be quite modest, however, and the Constitution went far beyond the immediate fiscal needs. This book argues that the proponents' anger at the states for their recurring breaches of duty to the united cause explains both critical steps and the driving impetus for the revolution. Other issues were less important.
1 - The Rise of the Righteous Anger
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 15-39
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THE FAILURE OF REQUISITIONS
Under the Articles of Confederation, the national-level government could raise funds for the national needs only by requisitions on the states. Each state was required to pay its quota of the total requisition into the federal treasury by raising revenue under its own tax system and collecting it with its own tax officials. Requisitions were mandatory in theory under the Articles – “sacred & obligatory,” as James Madison put it. With the end of the war, however, the state legislatures began treating requisitions as “mere recommendations,” even as “pompous petitions for charity” and they did not pay. In the requisition of 1786 – the last before the Constitution – Congress mandated that states pay $3,800,000, but it collected only $663.
Some states simply ignored the requisitions. Some sent them back to Congress for amendment, more to the states' liking. New Jersey said it had paid enough tax by paying the tariffs or “imposts” on goods imported through New York or Philadelphia and it repudiated the requisition in full. Congress's Board of Treasury had concluded in June 1786 that there was “no reasonable hope” that the requisitions would yield enough to allow Congress to make payments on the foreign debts, even assuming that nothing would be paid on the domestic war debt. George Washington reported,
Requisitions are a perfect nihility, where thirteen sovereign independent disunited States are in the habit of discussion and refusing compliance with them at their option. Requisitions are actually little better than a jest and a bye word throughout the land.
7 - False Issues: Bill of Rights, Democracy, and Slavery
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Book:
- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 163-186
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The critical issues of the ratification debate were whether power would be taken from the existing state governments and transferred to the new complete national government and whether the national government would be given the power over internal taxes for national defense. In context, other issues seem less critical. The ratification debate was not seriously about individual rights, nor about democracy or slavery. Individual rights, democracy, and slavery are intensely important issues, but they are not seriously implicated in the disagreements between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.
THE BILL OF RIGHTS
The Anti-Federalists tried to beat the creation of the new national government by finding serious abuses implied by almost every clause of the proposed text. Give Congress the power to raise armies, the Anti-Federalists argued, and it will “keep armies continually on foot,” and “billet them on the people at pleasure.” Give the federal government the power to make treaties and they would make a treaty to establish the Roman Catholic Church as the religion in the United States and make the Pope of Rome our President. Give the Congress the power to establish a Federal City, Anti-Federalists argued, and the federal government would make it a “sanctuary of the blackest crimes.” Give the federal government power over crimes and they “are nowhere restrained from inventing the most cruel and unheard-of punishments…. [R]acks and gibbets may be amongst the most mild instruments of their discipline.”
3 - The Superiority of the Extended Republic
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Book:
- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 61-73
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MADISON'S GRAND THEORY
In preparation for the convention, Madison abstracted beyond the immediate events and his comparative studies to conclude that the general-level government – the extended republic – would inevitably be superior to state governments, as a matter of fundamental philosophy. The theory of the superiority of the extended sphere was developed first in his Vices of the Political System; was continued in letters to Washington, Randolph, and especially Jefferson, and in the Philadelphia Convention; and then was published in the famous Federalist Number 10.
Madison sought to “prove in contradiction to the concurrent opinions of theoretical writers,” that the republican form of government must operate not within a small but within an extensive sphere. In Madison's vision, republican passions and selfish interests within the smaller states had trampled the general or national welfare and individual rights. Diversification of interests, found only in an extended republic, would moderate the effect of passions and selfish interests. In any representative democracy, Madison argued, the elected officials properly represent the passions and the selfish interests of people. The interests of people are diverse:
Those who contend for a simple Democracy … operating within narrow limits, assume or suppose a case which is altogether fictitious. They found their reasoning on the idea, that the people composing the Society, enjoy not only an equality of political rights; but that they have all precisely the same interests, and the same feelings in every respect. Were this in reality the case, their reasoning would be conclusive. The interest of the majority would be that of the minority also, the decision could only turn on mere opinion concerning the good of the whole. […]
4 - Shifting the Foundations from the States to the People
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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THE STEP-BY-STEP REVOLUTION
The new Constitution created a national government supreme over the states on a foundation of sovereignty of the people. The new government, the French reported home, would no longer need the consent of the states for any of it operations. “The necessity of having a government which should at once operate upon the people, and not upon the states,” Pinckney told South Carolina, “was conceived to be indispensable by every delegation present” at the Philadelphia Convention. Madison described the new Constitution to Jefferson saying that the Philadelphia Convention had adopted “the alternative of a government which instead of operating, on the States, should operate without their intervention on the individuals composing them.” Jefferson responded that he liked the idea of a Congress that should go on of itself peaceably, “without needing continual recurrence to the state legislatures.” The new federal government, Jefferson wrote, would “walk upon its own legs.”
The core idea of forming an independent, complete government on the national level was accomplished early in the Convention at Philadelphia and stuck. On May 30, 1787, the fourth day of a quorum, the convention passed a resolution, derived from the Virginia Plan, stating “that a national governt. ought to be established consisting of a supreme Legislative Executive & Judiciary.” The Convention went on for another three and half months, but the most important issues in Philadelphia were settled without compromise on that day when the Virginia Plan was endorsed.
Contents
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp v-vi
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Concluding Summary
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 276-278
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The purpose of the Constitution was to end the imbecility and impotence of the Confederation Congress. The pressing need was to give the federal government enough revenue to pay enough of the war debts that the federal government could borrow again to the defend the nation against the coming threats. The Constitution is first a tax document, a pro-tax document, written by nationalists to allow the federal government to tax people and things directly without going through the states.
The tax power is a necessary explanation for the Constitution, but it is not enough. Tax did not in fact require the revolutionary changes that the Constitution made. The Hamilton package that restored the public credit asked for a pittance – a day and half of workingman's wages per capita – and taxed only those things that were supposed to be suppressed – imports and hard liquor. Land was not taxed on the federal level, despite Madison's recommendation. Hamilton's package was less burdensome both in terms of revenue and means of tax than the 1783 impost and requisition proposal that New York had vetoed. The 1783 proposal worked within the assumptions of the confederation mode and would have kept Congress as the agent of the sovereign states.
The Constitution ended the supremacy of the states and the confederation mode and replaced it with a complete three-part national government able to walk on its own legs. The sovereignty of the people replaced the sovereignty of the states.
PART III - THE SPLIT AND THE END OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MOVEMENT
- Calvin H. Johnson, University of Texas, Austin
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- Righteous Anger at the Wicked States
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- 27 July 2009
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- 01 August 2005, pp 247-248
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Within three years of ratification, the movement that had achieved the Constitution divided into two irreconcilable factions. With the accomplishment of its primary goals, the movement lost its drive. By the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment in 1796, the Congress and the states decided that the just war debts of a state were not enforceable. That adoption is a clear line to mark the end of the constitutional movement.